EAST LANSING — It takes a lot to impress Tom Izzo.
Michigan State basketball’s Hall of Fame coach tends to lead with the bad when almost everything else is good. When things are amiss, he leans on the positives.
Even he appreciated what he saw Saturday night in the 12th-ranked Spartans’ 80-70 win over Notre Dame.
That’s what a 26-0 run spread between the first half and the second half will do.
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That’s what aggressive rebounding and swarming perimeter defense will do.
That’s what 26 assists on 30 made baskets and a 39-6 scoring edge from the reserves will do, too.
“It was kind of fun to watch us play,” Izzo said. “And I don’t say that very often.”
The Spartans’ brilliant performance wasn’t against a midmajor coming off a .500 season, such as Eastern Michigan. The Fighting Irish were a 20-win team in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Notre Dame is the first of three ACC foes the Spartans (2-0) will face in a 12-day span.
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MSU showed it has the ability to continue to share the ball despite the loss of two excellent passers in Cassius Winston and Xavier Tillman. The Spartans have 53 assists on 60 field goals in two games this season. And there is not a dominant passer, as nine players in the regular rotation had assists in each game.
“We feel comfortable out there, we feel more connected with each other,” junior captain Aaron Henry said. “And that’s not only on offense but on defense, too. We’re more in tune. … I just feel like we take what the game gives us. I feel like all of us are versatile, we all can play at the highest level.”
Joey Hauser attacked the glass ferociously, plucking the ball off the rim and getting MSU running in transition. The junior forward, who transferred from Marquette, had 12 of his game-high 16 rebounds by halftime. That helped the Spartans to a 48-36 rebounding edge, including 12 offensive boards that led to 12 second-chance points.
And defensively, despite some early speed bumps and good, late looks for the Irish after MSU had built a 28-point lead with 12:57 left, the Spartans were stellar. They had 12 blocked shots and nine steals while holding Notre Dame to 35% shooting and 8-of-21 from 3-point range in its season-opener.
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“Our motto here is defend, rebound and run,” Hauser said. “I haven’t had a game where I’ve grabbed 16, I don’t think, in my college career. It’s just making sure we’re boxing out our guys and other guys are boxing are well. There’s a lot of rebounds, a lot of missed shots are coming off. So credit to our defense”
After trailing 26-22 in the first half, MSU ratcheted up the defense while scoring the final 17 points of the period, sparked by a pair of Rocket Watts-to-Gabe Brown alley-oop dunks. Joshua Langford’s 3-pointer ignited another 9-0 run to open the second half, with Henry following with a 3-pointer and Foster Loyer driving and drawing contact for a three-point play to make it 47-26 with 18:25 left.
“They are really athletic defensively, and they physically got up into us after that little run we had,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said. “We stopped moving the ball. It was two passes and then someone put their head down, and that’s why — bad shots, poor shots, turnovers. And it pretty much knocked us out.
“(The Spartans) always have been a really good athletic-position defensive team, and I thought in that stretch they shut us down.”
All 10 rotational players who saw action scored at least three points. Nine of them had at least one assist. All but two grabbed at least two rebounds.
That included a bunch of stat sheet-stuffing showings:
* Henry had 14 points, eight rebounds, four blocks, three assist and a steal.
* Hauser finished with 10 points, 16 boards and four assists.
* Brown had nine points, five steals, two rebounds, two blocks and a steal.
* Marcus Bingham Jr. had seven points, seven rebounds, four blocks, a steal and an assist.
* And the backcourt trio of Langford, Loyer and Watts combined for 24 points, 13 assists, four rebounds and two steals.
“We’re just real tough right now,” said Watts, who had 13 points and six assists before tweaking his ankle late in the second half. “And I feel like when we’re connected on defense, we can lock teams down and we could push the ball hard, ‘1’ through ‘5.’”
The Spartans’ next travel to No. 8 Duke on Tuesday for the Champions Classic (7:30 p.m./ESPN).
The game, originally planned to tip off the college hoops season Nov. 10 at Chicago’s United Center was moved earlier this month to Cameron Indoor Stadium with an agreement that the Blue Devils will visit Breslin in the future for a contest that has yet to be scheduled.
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MSU has never won in Durham, North Carolina, losing there in the 2016 Big Ten/ACC Challenge. They are 3-13 all-time against the Blue Devils, including 0-3 at Duke. Izzo is 2-12 against Mike Krzyzewski, beating Duke in the 2019 Elite Eight to get to the Final Four and then losing 87-75 at Breslin last year in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.
“Those practices we have with each other are wars — there’s nothing easy, there’s nothing given,” Henry said. “Those are the things and the places that we try to make each other better. … We still have a lot of things to clean up on film, honestly. It looked good at points, but I feel like we have to be consistent and not let runs happen on us if we really want to be that elite defensive team that we strive to be.
“But I feel like we’re taking steps right now in games to become that.”
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball shows vs. Notre Dame that it can be elite
